edba8b50-cee6-489c-9b87-c72be0d5ed1aKentico Rocks, Bryan Soltis and I talk about some changes that have happened in the first few months of 2015. Listen to this episode to find out what has changed in one Kentico MVP's world, a quick explanation of why we missed last month's scheduled recording, and what else is on our minds in February of 2015.]]>Thu, 26 Feb 2015 02:44:52 GMT9988fb5e-5f9d-4355-9728-523df1d035f7GR DevDay is a one-day software development conference in Grand Rapids, MI. This year the conference is scheduled for March 21st, 2015 and is being hosted at Calvin College. The conference is completely volunteer-run and organized by developers with other developers in mind. It is definitely one of the most prominent software conferences in the state of Michigan. A wide range of technology topics will be explored and developers of all backgrounds are welcome.

This year I have the honor of being chosen as one of the speakers. I am going to give a talk on how developers have new tools in their tool belts to facilitate advanced Marketing Automation capabilities. If you attend my session you can expect to learn, from a developer's point of view, how you can utilize and extend your CMS to turn it into an automated ROI machine.

]]>Tue, 17 Feb 2015 02:30:42 GMTdb476d61-50ac-4896-8769-5a5a48d0ad18If you are a long time user of Kentico or a Kentico developer who maintains sites that utilize Kentico EMS, this tip is for you. So stop what you are doing, go grab a cup of coffee (or something stronger) and continue reading to see how you can keep your online marketing solution running in top notch form. I should also mention that you won't need to change a single line of code to do so. Yes that's right, not a single line.

I am going to start with a question though. Have you ever heard the saying that "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure"? If you have, then this post should make a ton of sense. If you have not, then maybe I can teach you something today.

]]>Sat, 14 Feb 2015 22:16:18 GMT6c35624d-43aa-46cf-ae3e-3bd07b99264fAs you probably know the release of Kentico 8.2 is right around the corner. During my initial testing of this minor point release, a few of the new online marketing features have piqued my interest. The change to Email Campaigns from Newsletters is pretty nice, the online marketing performance improvements are welcome, and the ability to import Contacts from a file rounds out what's new in this area of Kentico. The ability to import contacts from a CSV file is nothing earthshaking, however, I was pretty curious to see how it was implemented in 8.2 so I decided to put it through its paces.
]]>Sat, 03 Jan 2015 20:17:51 GMTb6c6b200-4653-4f61-8b9c-d6dd59a006eb
It is only fitting to start with the biggest news of the year and that would be the release of Kentico 8.0. This year's major point release was a huge success. The newly redesigned user interface and reduced footprint made developers and marketers quite happy. The product has never been easier to use. Not stopping with just a single release in the year Kentico also pushed out a minor point update to 8.1. This update included a few performance upgrades and a small set of new functionality. As a result Kentico 8.0 and Kentico 8.1 topics dominated the developer community blogs, podcasts, and questions on DevNet.

2014 turned out to be another great year for many more reasons too. Keep reading to find out what else happened and which posts made it to my Top 10 Kentico related posts of 2014.]]>Thu, 25 Dec 2014 20:36:22 GMT20773208-2752-403e-8d67-3794bd4262c5Mon, 17 Nov 2014 02:09:03 GMT8f35299d-4dfa-4bda-bf08-e22c8de69e3fOn November 10th and 11th, just a few short days away, Kentico Developers, Partners, Employees and Customers will be meeting up in Boston, MA for the 2014 version of Kentico Connection. I am attending and speaking again at the best, most informative Kentico CMS conference of the year.

As always I am truly looking forward to the event. It is going to be a great opportunity to meet and network with other Kentico Developers and Partners, especially Brenden Kehren who won a free a ticket to the conference from my own give away. However, this conference is going to be jammed packed for me. I am pulling triple duty. I will be giving two sessions and taking part in a new event this year, a live CMS-Connected show.

]]>Sat, 01 Nov 2014 15:15:16 GMTa01dfe2a-5005-4526-ba81-33cf5b57fbf2Better late than never right? I had originally planned on announcing the winner of my Win a Free Ticket to Kentico Connection 2014 Boston contest at 1:00 PM EST today. That obviously didn’t happen. So let's get right down to business tonight. Drum roll please....

Bkehren was selected at random from the different entries that the contest received.
]]>Tue, 28 Oct 2014 02:03:34 GMTd8e1525f-0ea5-45a5-b93e-9f5f5836c218Any seasoned ASP.Net developer knows that building your project(s) before starting a debugging session is an important step to take to ensure that there are no silly coding mistakes lurking around. Most seasoned Kentico developers know that performing a full build on a Kentico web site project can be time consuming if there is not a Solid State Drive in use on the computer running Visual Studio.

I myself have experienced this issue many times over, and a long time ago I finally decided to see what options there are out there for speeding up the process. During my recent journey to Kentico Connection Prague, a few of the other Kentico MVPs reminded me that I had never put out a blog post about a simple trick that you can take to speed up your debugging session in Kentico. Today I am going to illustrate one method that might just save you and other Kentico developers out there some time.

]]>Mon, 27 Oct 2014 01:46:26 GMT79f3d54d-1ae8-408a-a2db-0525ff476496Yep, you read it right. I am officially opening a new contest. I am giving away a FREE ticket to the upcoming Kentico Connections 2014 conference in Boston, MA on November 10th and 11th, 2014.
]]>Sat, 11 Oct 2014 14:57:20 GMT3ec1b703-3244-4ee6-915c-ccaa82a212bfIn another special episode of Kentico Rocks,Bryan Soltis and Brian McKeiver discuss what their trip across the pond was like as they attended this year's European version of the Kentico Connection conference in Prague. In case you did not hear, all four Kentico MVPs made the journey to converge on the capitol city of the Czech Republic. As a group we discuss some of the highlights of the two day event including some of our favorite moments. Kentico even had a special surprise in store for all of the event attendees that was quite a blast. Give this episode a listen to find out exactly what happened.
]]>Thu, 09 Oct 2014 02:01:33 GMT3669dba6-def6-49a0-a382-ef5824fc7557In this episode of Kentico Rocks,Bryan Soltis and Brian McKeiver join forces with a few special guests. The group talks about a few different strategies that can be used to handle large amounts of data in Kentico. In reality large amounts of data can mean many different things, especially when it comes to displaying that data on a website. For this episode of Kentico Rocks we did try to narrow down our focus to the basics of content management with consideration to big datasets. Care to take a guess who joins us ? Listen to the episode to find out who.
]]>Wed, 08 Oct 2014 20:56:18 GMT5c8f9146-72b5-4cf3-9c73-beec639505ceToday I am pleased to announce my latest custom Kentico module, the Zoho CRM Module for Kentico 8.x. Why write a module for Zoho you might ask? Well according to a few sources Zoho is a very common CRM that many organizations across the world utilize for customer relationship management, and it just so happens to be the CRM that we use at BizStream. Since BizStream.com has been using Kentico EMS for quite a while now it made a ton of sense to extend and connect the two solutions. In doing so our activity tracking and contact information can flow between both systems. Yep that’s right the custom module features a two synchronization between on-line marketing contacts in Kentico and leads in Zoho. Keep reading to find out what other goodies this custom module for Kentico 8.0 and Kentico 8.1 features.
]]>Tue, 07 Oct 2014 02:26:50 GMTac9ac22c-4ef1-4432-9207-256a8f407c9cIn the second part of the mini blog post series I am going to cover how we connect the items that we created in part one to the front end of the Pages that you want to use the Disqus blog post comment system on. Make sure you read and follow part one of How to Connect Disqus Comments to Kentico EMS Activity Trackingfirst before you contine on. In this post I will show you how to finish off all of the required configuration.

]]>Thu, 18 Sep 2014 02:54:27 GMT3cf22578-cb4d-4c63-b1f5-2afc774f0ef4My team and I use the Disqus blog comment system on the blogs that we have created for BizStream.com, my site here at Mcbeev.com, and many other of our client projects. Disqus is a great system for handling blog post comments. It makes the moderating, anti-spam, and community building aspect of running a blog a breeze. I could not recommend it more.

All of those aforementioned blogs are of course powered by my favorite ASP.Net based CMS, Kentico. You might be wondering why, for those very same sites, we do not use the built-in Blog Comment View webpart that comes with Kentico. The truth is that this one area of Kentico is a bit outdated in terms of HTML markup and overall functionality. These deficiencies make styling the webpart a challenge, to meet a good responsive design, plus the anti-spam system that Kentico has is ok, but not great. For those reasons we now use Disqus.

One thing that has always bugged me about using Disqus for comments is that the service is all purely client side / JavaScript based, and therefore I lose a little bit of insight into exactly who is commenting on my blog posts from a Kentico Contact Management and Activity Tracking perspective.

My goal today is to show you how to fix that and trap those client side events that happen via JavaScript and log them in the built in Kentico Activity Tracking database and UI. Dive into my two part mini blog post series by following the read more link.

]]>Thu, 18 Sep 2014 02:54:12 GMT3ec5ced4-9035-47b6-b2bb-2d38815cea11Recently I was tasked with creating my own On-line Marketing Automation Process Action inside of Kentico 8. I wasn't exactly sure of which method signature to start from so it took a bit of digging to figure out the right class to inherit from. Luckily it didn't take long because the excellent help documentation that comes with Kentico 8 set me on the right path. I'm hoping to save the next Kentico developer who has to do this some time, so I have posted two sample code snippets below. Have I mentioned that I love how easy it is to extend the built-in foundation of Kentico ?

]]>Sat, 16 Aug 2014 20:10:34 GMT4aacafe8-46c4-4c85-92a8-3e2f8047d206I'm very happy to announce that I will be attending and speaking at Kentico Connection 2014 Prague. Yes that's right my passport is fully renewed and airfare is booked to the Czech Republic for September 29th - 30th. Kentico Connection is the premiere conference for Kentico developers, customers, and partners. Attendees can expect to gain deep technical and industry insights into all things Kentico and I am very honored to be a part of it.

My session, Harness the Power of Marketing Automation, will walk through Kentico's built-in Marketing Automation tools. The goal of the talk is to show attendees how the platform can be used to save time and generate more traffic to their website.

There also is an added benefit that my fellow Kentico MVP's and I will all also be attending the conference in Prague. For the first time ever all four of us will be in the same timezone, same location, and most likely same room. This is a great opportunity to pick our brains on your Kentico issues.

]]>Wed, 13 Aug 2014 22:18:16 GMT6e5e974e-fc6a-487d-a965-822be346cf6dAs you may or may not know, the beta version of Kentico 8.1 was recently released. I've had a chance to take it for a spin and wanted to share my first impressions on what the newest version of Kentico brings to the table. Here's a secret...it's pretty darn impressive.
]]>Fri, 08 Aug 2014 03:22:51 GMT349d4d3e-89d2-4c69-b039-2d65f8a8ced7In this episode of Kentico Rocks,Bryan Soltis and Brian McKeiver talk about the Kentico Marketplace. Did you know there are tons of tested and proven add-ons that you can use to enhance your Kentico website? Even better most of them are free. From there we venture on to the upcoming release of Kentico 8.1 and what to expect plus a shout out to the newest Kentico MVP.
]]>Thu, 31 Jul 2014 18:58:12 GMT815a8e47-cb86-45be-9605-77fbfea24217I finally had enough time to sit down and upgrade my blog here at Mcbeev.com to Kentico 8. All and all it was not that bad of a process. I'm pretty happy with the results because the improvements in the product are quite worth it. The only challenging part was upgrading all of the custom code and developer examples that I have written over the years. It has been a fun trip down memory lane for some of them.

Keep reading to find out a few Kentico 8 upgrade tips that might just save you some time during your upgrade.

]]>Wed, 23 Jul 2014 02:14:23 GMT642d39e6-b7f0-4bfa-b6f0-57f71576d6d5A few people have recently asked if my web parts for integrating with Yammer work with version 8.0 of Kentico. As it turns out, not only has Kentico released a new major version since I wrote these web parts, but so has the Yammer API. Tonight I retro-fitted the code to work with the new API as well as both versions 7.0 and 8.0 of Kentico. You can grab the download of my Yammer Web Part Pack 1.1 after the jump.
]]>Tue, 15 Jul 2014 03:44:58 GMTe1dcd298-70e7-4ca0-a4c5-a8b3ac90516cIn this episode of Kentico Rocks,Bryan Soltis and I talk about the the recent goings on in the Kentico community. Bryan ventured out to a whole different hemisphere to speak at Kentico Connection Sydney, while I took a 15 min car ride downtown to speak at the local CMS Shootout event. I think I got shorted in the travel aspect of this whole thing...
]]>Wed, 11 Jun 2014 20:04:35 GMT1ad92481-58ca-4d9a-991b-8b4456693350
In this quick How To guide, I will show how you can increase your subscriber count using the power of Marketing Automation via built-in Kentico functionality. The best part about this solution is that there is no custom code required. That's right, all you have to do is follow these simple steps to help generate more subscribers for your digital marketing efforts which should in turn get you more leads from your Kentico website.
]]>Mon, 02 Jun 2014 02:39:38 GMTab93ecfe-dc9d-45f1-b845-ee4df31d32c6
Since the Kentico 8 Upgrade tool dropped, I have been itching to get some time in on upgrading my Kentico blog here at Mcbeev.com. Tonight I was working on viewing the results of the upgraded code and some newer changes in the API when it comes to custom Scheduled Tasks.
]]>Thu, 22 May 2014 03:58:46 GMT257bf2ee-ac47-440e-8e3e-dd220e932371In this episode of Kentico Rocks,Bryan Soltis and I talk about the our first impressions of Kentico 8.0. During the first two weeks of its release we have put the platform through its paces and have a lot to report. Hear what we think about the new User Interface, Custom Module development, new Kentico 8.0 API changes / enhancements and more.
]]>Wed, 16 Apr 2014 01:08:25 GMTb9db72d3-835e-4a8e-b36a-cc27f301586a
You might know by now that Kentico's Online Marketing Solution allows you to optimize your website content with an advanced set of digital marketing tools. In my opinion, the easiest and most simple way to optimize your page content is to utilize A/B testing. With the release of Kentico 8 optimizing your pages utilizing A/B testing has become even easier to do.

If you are not sure how to do an A/B Test in Kentico, the full example can be watched via the Kentico 8 A/B Test Feature Series that Thom Robbins has put togther over on Kentico DevNet. It's a really great walkthrough on every step you need to take in Kentico to create your A/B Test. Now on to the dead-simple Kentico A/B Test examples.

]]>Sun, 13 Apr 2014 20:21:19 GMT817d11fc-b95e-4b8b-90f2-e2a41ad08373
About a month from now my fellow Kentico MVPs and I will be joined by Thom Robbins and Miro Remias from Kentico to have a discussion on tips, tricks, and best practices for building websites using Kentico. In our last edition of the show we made it much more a conversation and the feedback was great. We plan on continuing the new format this time. To find out more read the offiical Kentico devnet blog post all about our expert virtual panel. Click through to the full post to to Ask Us Your Question Now.
]]>Sat, 12 Apr 2014 20:24:14 GMTd64c4808-3ec3-4d03-9b74-6d3964b05af0
Chances are that you if you are reading this, you have seen that Kentico 8 is right around the corner. Improvements to the Kentico E-commerce solution are also a part of the focus in this major point release. I’m very excited to introduce 2 under-the-radar improvements that you may not have seen yet. These 2 improvements come with the MMP3 build of Kentico 8. Kentico has listened to the community and updated the Shopping Cart engine to be even easier to work with than before. I am very excited about it. Keep reading to see how you can customize the checkout process and mobile experience on your Kentico E-commerce website.
]]>Sun, 09 Mar 2014 19:23:08 GMT1b978e32-d600-429e-b01c-a9c9980d50a8In this episode of Kentico Rocks,Bryan Soltis and I talk about the upcoming release of Kentico 8.0. It's been 18 months in the making, and I think that it has been totally worth the wait. Neither of us Kentico MVP's can wait for the official release date of March 31st.
]]>Sat, 08 Mar 2014 16:59:16 GMT1fe7eda7-e250-4ea7-9885-5323f04fc7f6In this episode of Kentico Rocks,Bryan Soltis and I reflect on again being awarded Kentico MVP status by Kentico software. We both feel incredibly honored to receive the award and talk about what it means to be a Kentico MVP.

From the very first day I used Kentico CMS, I was sold that this was the CMS for me and my company. Now, over 4 years later, I am still constantly impressed with the quality and functionality of the product and the people behind it. I love working with Kentico and am honored to be once again nominated as a Kentico MVP for my contributions to the Kentico community. I can't wait to see what the future of Kentico brings. You can listen to the entire podcast after the jump.

]]>Fri, 14 Feb 2014 19:21:23 GMTf7a3eb7c-2a3e-4913-987d-0baf07ec24c9
My goal of this Quick Tip is to help any Kentico developer out there who may run into a situation where neither the built-in Scheduled Tasks nor custom Scheduled Tasks are executing either manually or automatically. I actually ran into this situation twice in the last two weeks on projects that we are working on with Kentico CMS 7.0 at BizStream.
]]>Sun, 09 Feb 2014 16:14:12 GMT53087f36-4548-46ed-9aab-80cebd06f009Kentico CMS / EMS 8 is slated to be released in just a few short months (official release date is set to end of Q1/2014). But with early preview builds in the wild, some great feedback is coming in from the Kentico community for those who have taken a first look at it. I myself have been reviewing the latest builds for a bit now. I am truly impressed with this update, and I want to share with you what you can expect in the new release of Kentico Enterprise Marketing Solution.

Keep reading to find out about what’s new for the on-line marketing tools that Kentico EMS gives you. Side note one: they are no particular order other than the order I discovered them in. Side note two: All content of this blog post is from the Milestone 2 Beta version of Kentico 8 and is subject to change before the final gold version is released.

]]>Sun, 26 Jan 2014 19:47:14 GMT574a37d7-35b4-40f0-b93c-a10102fd96f2
If you are using Kentico EMS to power your E-commerce shop don't forget to set the On-line Marketing related Conversion Settings. There are three sets of Conversion names and values that come built in.

Registration conversion - name & value of the conversion that will be logged when a user successfully registers on the website through the checkout process.

Order conversion - name & value of the conversion that will be logged when a user completes an order.

Add to shopping cart conversion - the name & value of the conversion that will be logged when a user adds a product to the shopping cart.

These conversion settings and values are very valuable peices of data to have when measuring the activity and effectiveness of your e-commerce website. Once these values are configured, your Activities log should show them with their repsective values.

]]>Sat, 11 Jan 2014 22:57:07 GMT1599eca9-2e22-4474-9744-e9498096c136Happy Holidays everyone. Since it's the first day of the year, and the Rose Bowl game doesn't start until 5:00 pm, I thought it would be a good time to reflect on the past year.

2013 was a successful year for myself, BizStream, and Kentico. My blog here at Mcbeev.com saw it’s traffic increase by over 55% from 2012, that is a tremendous increase. Most of that traffic is attributed to my two most popular blog posts of the year combined with the fact that I feel Kentico is becoming more and more popular among developers.

The various social channels that I participate in didn't have quite as big of a jump, my Twitter followers increased only about 10%, but my Google +1's increased about 35%. To be honest 2013 was so busy I didnt have enough time to be overly social. But, enough about me, let’s get to the real point of this blog post.

]]>Wed, 01 Jan 2014 15:52:20 GMT49c8482e-cb1b-4cab-b32b-7a726ccb53e0
One month from today my fellow Kentico MVPs and I will be joined by Thom Robbins and Juraj Ondrus from Kentico to answer your questions about Kentico CMS and Kentico EMS. Ring in the new year with us and your Kentico questions.

]]>Sun, 22 Dec 2013 19:01:41 GMTd8c38b8b-6549-48a2-bf79-1cadb61eb4d3In this episode of Kentico Rocks,Bryan Soltis and I discuss how best to use Kentico CMS to power E-commerce websites. We talk in detail about how and why we like using the Kentico platform for building E-commerce solutions. Bryan and I have both been building Kentico E-commerce sites since Kentico 5.5 came out and share our inisights into how the platform has matured over the last few years. Any developer who is thinking about using Kentico CMS or Kentico EMS to create a new E-commerce based website should definitely listen up.
]]>Sun, 08 Dec 2013 19:26:02 GMT5f234924-e852-43ba-adf2-12d349180d7c
I'm happy to announce that Kentico Rocks is now available on iTunes. The following URL should open up the iTunes store:

You can search the iTunes store for Kentico or Kentico Rocks and it should come up as well. By all means subsribe to the feed and feel free to rate each episode if you like them. As always we are very interested in any feedback you may have on the podcast. Feel free to leave a comment on my blog here to let us know what you think.

]]>Sat, 23 Nov 2013 20:16:00 GMTcb8ffc28-f4bf-4e97-a380-c36f2bf5670fI'm happy to present the third episode of Kentico Rocks by Brian McKeiver and Bryan Soltis. In this episode Bryan and I discuss the good, the bad, and the ugly when it comes to upgrading Kentico CMS. One of these days I promise that it will be up as a podcast subscription service / iTunes. Maybe.

]]>Fri, 15 Nov 2013 03:44:16 GMTd4c91b4d-7dc8-43be-a9d0-793457e5e89a
I'm happy today to introduce 4 new Yammer web parts for Kentico CMS. If you or your company have a Kentico CMS based intranet and are wondering how to be more social than you need these web parts! With these new parts you can display your company's group feed, like a page, follow a page, and finally comment on a page. Utilizing the group of web parts is a powerful way to foster enterprise collaboration on your company's intranet.

Why Yammer? Well, did you know that 85% of Fortune 500 companies use Yammer for Enterprise Social? I was a bit surprised that number was so high myself, but it explains why there has been a recent trend of requests from our customer base at BizStream. Customers as well as potential clients are asking to include Yammer feeds in their intranets or help them integrate Yammer with their SharePoint installations and business applications.

After seeing this trend we started using Yammer recently for our own internal BizStream intranet. I am quite pleased with the results so far. And since we use Kentico to power our intranet it was time to fire up Visual Studio and write some code.

]]>Sun, 03 Nov 2013 19:08:56 GMTdabd21d9-b784-44d5-a107-c2f0f042b345
This is second installment of Brian McKeiver and Bryan Soltis' Kentico CMS Podcast. Today we are discussing some of our favorite customizations of Kentico CMS and why they were successful.

Our goal of the new podcast is to talk about Kentico and focus on what is going on with the Kentico development community. In our opinion there is a boom in Kentico projects and opportunities out there recently, and anything that we can do to let more developers know about Kentico and how best to utilzie it is a good thing.

No update yet on if we should throw up the podcast files on iTunes or Windows Store or wherever. Hold tight and we will get a syndication feed up soon. For now you can subscribe to my blog via email if you want to know when new episodes come out. Just go back to the home page and enter your email address in the side bar under the Stay Up To Date section.

]]>Fri, 25 Oct 2013 18:24:55 GMT796f6218-2164-4627-aa53-7776d2539548
In this post I will walk you through creating a new Page Tab App in Facebook using any existing Kentico CMS web site page. It is shockingly easy how to do this once you know one simple secret. But more about that later on in this post. The idea here is that we can leverage the fact that your Kentico CMS web site can easily be extended to host pages or apps "inside" of Facebook.

In case you do not know what a Facebook Page Tab App is, I would encourage you to read more about it on Facebook's developer documentation. Basically a Page Tab App is one of the small boxes, or tabs, that appear on any Facebook Page.

Most on-line marketers configure their brand's Facebook Page to have custom tabs that showcase a brand's product a service, or utilize custom tabs to create mini applications that give incentive to Facebook users to “Like” the page or brand. These tabs are really nothing more than just iframe elements to an html page that can be hosted anywhere. Specifically not hosted on Facebook itself.

I am providing a full walk-through on how to create this solution below. However, if you want to jump right to the end result and see what the heck I am talking about, you can navigate to my own Mcbeev.com Page on Facebook and click on the Subscribe Page Tab App. That is what we are building in the full example.

]]>Sun, 13 Oct 2013 00:06:18 GMT83dc9b2b-397e-48ba-b6c4-47e8c70a53bb
About two weeks ago fellow Kentico MVP, Bryan Soltis, and I decided to start a podcast focused on Kentico CMS. The idea was formed over a beer, or three, while we were both in Boston for the Kentico Connection conference. Our goal of the new podcast is to talk about Kentico and focus on what is going on with the Kentico development community. In our opinion there is a boom in Kentico projects and opportunities out there recently, and anything that we can do to let more developers know about Kentico and how best to utilzie it is a good thing.

I am also excited about starting up this podcast because it is a new format for me. I have not previously ever attempted to host one. We are still in the process of figuring out if we should throw up the podcast files on iTunes or Windows Store or wherever. Hold tight and we will get a syndication feed up as soon as we figure it out. For now you can subscribe to my blog via email if you want to know when new episodes come out. Just go back to the home page and enter your email address in the side bar under the Stay Up To Date section.

]]>Sun, 06 Oct 2013 01:00:25 GMT3731a349-0eda-4b68-9660-1a7495429582
This past week I attended and spoke at the 4th annual Kentico Connection conference in Boston, MA. The annual conference is the premier learning and networking event for Kentico developers, partners, and customers. The event was broken up into three tracks. The technology track focused on detailed product functionality within Kentico 7 and various product improvements slated in Kentico 8. Next, there was a partner track which showcased case studies and completed projects that are built by Kentico partners. The last track, the marketing track, was a program for marketing professionals interested in digital marketing best practices.

Frequently throughout the conference, I wished I could be in two places at once because of the quality of each session. It truly is one of my favorite events of the year because there is so much to see and so many like-minded people to network with. This year BizStream was also well represented by myself and few of my colleagues because we were a standard sponsor as well as lanyard sponsor for the event.

]]>Sun, 29 Sep 2013 01:56:58 GMT6fd00781-bce3-45da-9412-04e41929ee8b
Wow I can't believe that I almost forgot to mention it here on my blog, but on September 23rd and 24th, just a few short days away, Kentico Developers, Partners, Employees and Customers will be meeting up in Boston, MA for the 2013 version of Kentico Connection. I am attending and speaking again at the best, most informative Kentico CMS conference of the year.

I am thrilled to be speaking at the conference. I will be giving a session on Team Development with Kentico CMS. Full abstract is below.

Team Development Best Practices for Kentico CMS by Brian McKeiver The Team Development Best Practices for Kentico CMS session is intended to show you how to be as efficient as possible when developing in teams for your Kentico project. Topics covered will include how to setup multiple environments that enable various resources to collaborate as painlessly as possible, a review of using third party source control management systems, working with document and object versioning, and deploying changes between development, staging, and production.

]]>Wed, 18 Sep 2013 01:51:33 GMTb15a9d17-8f57-40b2-a68a-ccef4f637876
This is the second part of the blog post series that wraps up the whole idea and focuses on the Newsletter portion of the solution. If you did not read the first post of the series, please be sure to read part 1 of Anonymous Blog Post Notifications using Advanced Workflow in Kentico CMS.
]]>Sun, 15 Sep 2013 03:12:00 GMT039638dd-30ce-48af-b894-4027e8ddd8bdKentico CMS has many different ways to handle content notifications in the form of email alerts. You can use the built in notification gateways, various subscription web parts, and/or dynamic newsletters. All of these components offer great solutions to the various scenarios where you want to keep your users up to date on what is going on with the content on your website. Notice the key word I used in that last sentence, users. I am re-enforcing that point because all of the above mentioned components require that a subscriber be a full user account, password and all, in your Kentico website.

Having a user who has a full account on the website works perfectly when it comes to an intranet or membership based web site, but doesn’t always work for someone who is just running a blog or basic company website. Sometimes the whole goal of a personal blog or brochure site is to actually capture an anonymous visitor’s email address without that visitor having to go through the hassle of creating a full fledged account. The less steps the better is usually the rule of thumb. So having a visitor perform a full registration may not be a good thing and could been seen as a barrier to entry.

In this two part mini blog post series I am going to show you how to leverage a few tools that Kentico CMS gives you, out of the box, to create a system to alert anonymous subscribers when a new blog post is created. The solution involves using the built in Newsletter module, Advanced Workflow, and a custom Workflow Action to tie it all together. One other small note, Kentico CMS Ultimate or Kentico EMS are required for all of this to work.

]]>Sun, 15 Sep 2013 03:08:10 GMT222fbb21-d440-41fc-8716-6abbde9082b7
In about 5 days from now, my fellow Kentico MVPs and I will be joined by Thom Robbins and Juraj Ondrus from Kentico to answer your questions about Kentico CMS and Kentico EMS. We'd love to answer any of your burning questions so don't miss your chance.

Chief Evangelist for Kentico CMS,Thom Robbins, caught up with me last week and we talked about what to expect at the fourth installment of the panel.

]]>Sat, 07 Sep 2013 22:58:58 GMTb1f33b83-bf45-4219-aced-de490703ec4e
Do you ever wish that you had nickel for every time you typed in the letters c-m-s-d-e-s-k ? Well then this Google Chrome extension is for you. Cody Rose, one of our certified Kentico developers at BizStream recently developed a slick little browser extension that allows you to get into any Kentico sites' CMSDesk or CMSSiteManager with one quick keyboard shortcut. That's right all's that you have to do is hit ALT-1 to get to CMSDesk or ALT-2 to get to CMSSiteManager.
]]>Sat, 10 Aug 2013 23:36:17 GMT93d1f34e-a0fb-49a4-9a19-f34c6bbdb888
A few of my fellow developers were recently inspired by one of the newer knowledge based articles post over on Kentico DevNet about how to serve less HTML code from a Kentico web part. While their intentions were good they forgot one golden rule of correctly utilizing ASP.NET controls that involve PostBacks. It took me awhile to figure out why none of the Edit and Delete buttons were working as expected on each row of the UniGrid. So I am sharing this quick story today to hopefully save some time for other Kentico developers out there.
]]>Thu, 01 Aug 2013 02:19:37 GMT081a84b9-9ae0-4e65-8749-e8b21c826254
A few weeks back I was lucky enough to be a part of the Azure Kentico Virtual Conference hosted by Kentico Software. The day long virtual conference featured multiple sessions that showed developers how to jump start Windows Azure development using Kentico CMS and Kentico EMS. As a followup to the event, I am posting my talk and slide deck on this blog post.

Below you can watch my presentation, "Get set.. Introduction to Windows Azure Development". via the below embedded video. The presentation download is after the jump.

]]>Sun, 23 Jun 2013 14:54:20 GMT5018c44b-e3dd-48fc-8cc8-c959d60d8c9a
In about 3 weeks from now, my fellow Kentico MVPs and I will be joined by Thom Robbins and Juraj Ondrus from Kentico to answer your questions about Kentico CMS and Kentico EMS. We'd love to answer any of your burning questions so don't miss your chance.
]]>Mon, 03 Jun 2013 03:06:56 GMT021b312b-3624-49f2-8d57-b44a1d79759a
Have you ever had your Shopping Cart web part not get past step two in the checkout process? Or ever had your Logon Form web part not authenticate correctly. Maybe your Comment View web part doesn’t allow you to edit or add a Blog Post comment ? There is nothing more frustrating to a Kentico developer than spending time on a problem that should not be a problem.

Most developers that have experience with Kentico have probably added hundreds of web parts to web part zones in their careers. 99.9% of the time they just work the way they should. However, every once in awhile something goes wrong, and when it does, it can be infuriating. I have put together the following list below to hopefully save even the most grizzled Kentico veteran some time when it comes to troubleshooting why a web part refuses to work the way it should.

]]>Sat, 25 May 2013 23:42:12 GMT7582b36c-6cbd-45c6-b944-db44ce1ac1a7
I'm honored to be a part of the first ever Windows Azure Kentico Virtual Conference hosted by Kentico Software. This event is set to take place on June 11th, 2013. The day long virtual conference will feature multiple sessions that intend to help jump start Windows Azure development using Kentico CMS and Kentico EMS.

I'm presenting my session, "Get set.. Introduction to Windows Azure Development", that reviews how to prepare your development environment for Windows Azure and Kentico CMS. It will include a review of the required components, a walkthrough on how to setup your Microsoft Windows Azure developer account, and an install of Kentico CMS configured for Azure via the Kentico Installation Manager. I will also try to give out some pro tips on how to enhance your day to day Visual Studio 2012 productivity.

]]>Sun, 05 May 2013 02:55:11 GMT4997e790-367d-4b0e-8dcc-915e4d48b64b
Today I am pleased to announce my latest contribution to the Kentico developer community, the Bit.ly Metrics Module for Kentico CMS 7.0. The purpose of this module is to bring everything you need into Kentico CMS when it comes to using the Bit.ly URL Shortening service. The module gives you a way to see all of your Bit.ly metrics, aka user link history, as a custom Tool in the CMSDesk and at the page or document level. The data for each shortened link is stored in a custom table, and it is kept in sync using the Integration Bus component of Kentico CMS.

The Bit.ly Metrics module also gives content editors the ability to shorten any Document URL right from within the CMSDesk. Utilizing this module saves you or your content administrators the time of jumping out and logging into the backend of Bit.ly to see how often your links are being clicked. My favorite part about it is that with one click I can sort the data and compare how often one or more of my links are being clicked.

Modules in Kentico CMS represent groups of functionality in Kentico. They can be a set of web parts, scheduled tasks, custom settings, and just about anything else in the platform. They are a great way to extend the system to allow for custom functionality. They are also easily exportable from one instance of Kentico to another. This module is a result of my presentation last fall at Kentico Connection 2012 about integrating with Kentico CMS. I demo’d the functionality to the audience during my session, but time flies fast, and I did not have a chance to finish it until a few days ago.

]]>Mon, 15 Apr 2013 02:31:00 GMT6fc6da46-1c8b-442b-bbbf-c5a08119da94
In just about 10 days from now, my fellow Kentico MVPs and I will be joined by Thom Robbins and Juraj Ondrus from Kentico to answer your questions about Kentico CMS and Kentico EMS. Recently I spoke with Thom Robbins about how the first virtual panel went and what to expect this time. You can watch our discussion below. We'd love to answer any of your burning questions so don't miss your chance.

]]>Sun, 31 Mar 2013 20:29:02 GMT77d9eeff-da8e-4ba6-9e84-02c9c3b7aac6
I’m happy to report that the Cloud Power GR event went off without a hitch this past week. We had a pretty decent turnout, although the unexpected snow storm that morning did not help attendance wise. The event was hosted this past Tuesday at Grand Valley State University’s Eberhard Center in downtown Grand Rapids MI.

Cloud Power GR 2013 featured six different presentations on a wide variety of technical and non-technical aspects of how cloud computing can help businesses reduce IT cost and increase productivity. The morning started off with the audience hearing about trends and changes to Microsoft’s Cloud platform and service offerings from Paul Schenkel. Paul challenged the audience to think how they could leverage cloud services to meet their infrastructure needs.

]]>Sat, 23 Mar 2013 03:59:56 GMT1c343210-843d-4ce5-816f-c979ca037dc6
I’m proud to announce the second edition of our free educational technology event March 19th, 2013 in the Grand Rapids, Michigan area, Cloud Power GR. The event is hosted by BizStream and NVINT, providers of cloud hosted applications and cloud hosting services. The goal is to explain cloud computing in a way everyone from the seasoned IT Director to the typical business person can understand. You can read my recap from the first edition of the Cloud Power GR event too to find out more.
]]>Sun, 10 Mar 2013 18:52:31 GMT7b4d3ccf-f3de-4d3a-a203-ab5c312c7be5
My co-worker and all around good guy, Adam Reece, has blogged about a slick CSS and JavaScript loading technique on his site at Adam-Reece.com. Adam works as a Senior Web Designer and Front End Developer with me at BizStream. He is also a certified Kentico developer. What I am trying to say is that he really knows a ton about designing and building websites, so when Adam speaks we all listen.

The tip itself relates to how a developer can control the order of script and link tags via simple web parts on a page template in Kentico CMS. Selectively controlling the order that CSS and script loads on a page is very important in terms of overall load speed of a page. You dont want your script loading before your style sheets because the browser will block until all of the CSS is loaded.

]]>Mon, 25 Feb 2013 00:31:31 GMT90ff6577-537f-4170-81ce-82f7e5cfc394
If you are reading this blog post then you probably already know that I think Kentico CMS is the best ASP.NET based Content Management System around. Kentico is an incredibly powerful and flexible platform to build web sites and web applications with. With that being said, just like any other system on the planet, if you are not careful you can end up using it the wrong way. Today I am going to try to shed some light on a few common mistakes that I have seen in the wild with Kentico. Hopefully after you read this list you will be able to avoid some of them.

Keep reading to see my list of 7 things that developers should not do with Kentico CMS.

]]>Mon, 11 Feb 2013 04:01:36 GMT756e2ed4-c4b8-4cc6-8aca-2a0a17f35e12
Over 200 web sites were submitted to the Kentico “Site of the Year 2012” contest. Those submissions were divided up into 12 categories based on which industry that each website was based in, as well as a few special categories like best mobile website and best overall graphic design.

One of the sites that was named a finalist is www.MaryFreeBed.com. The Mary Free Bed website falls in the Healthcare category. It just so happens that it is a website that BizStream developed from the ground up, and one that we are very proud to be a part of. We worked with a great set of people to make this website and I commend everyone who was part of the team. This is the second time in the past few years that an implementation of the Mary Free Bed website has been recognized in this global competition.

]]>Sat, 19 Jan 2013 19:11:45 GMT9f7efb58-f1cd-45d8-bf65-fbccc824b3ff
Calling all Kentico Developers, Customers, and Partners; about one week from now, January 24, 2013, a panel of Kentico Experts will be getting together to answer any and all questions you may have about Kentico CMS. The panel will be made up of the three Kentico MVPs, including myself, and official Kentico representatives Juraj Ondrus and Thom Robbins.

During the virtual panel you and the rest of the internet will be given the chance to have your pressing Kentico CMS or Kentico EMS questions answered by the panel of experts.

We are very excited to see how this session pans out, and can't wait to start the discussion. See how to participate further over at Kentico DevNet. After the jump I have some ideas for common questions that I get asked all the time about Kentico. Click the Read More link to see them.

]]>Fri, 18 Jan 2013 04:55:15 GMT8bc98d36-8f89-4362-876c-eb97ec0b56cf
The holiday season has provided me with some rare downtime, as a result, I thought it would be a good time to take a moment and reflect on the past year. 2012 was a very successful year no matter which way you slice it. The year started out with a bang for me personally, as I was named a Kentico MVP for the first time. I was and still am honored at having this distinction. My very own blog here at Mcbeev.com saw it’s traffic increase by over 25% from 2011, and the number of followers that I have on Twitter increased roughly about the same amount too. But, enough about me, let’s get to the good stuff.

One of the most significant events of 2012 when it comes to Kentico, was the the release of version 7. The 7.0 release focused on optimizing and improving the Kentico CMS Desk user’s and/or developer’s experience. The overall interface is also a bit snappier than other previous releases of Kentico. And of course the release also included a whole host of new features and functionality; On-site Editing, Advanced Workflow, Translation Management, Chat, Banner Management etc. etc..

But without any further ado, below is my list of the Top 10 Kentico Related Posts of 2012 at Mcbeev.com.

]]>Mon, 31 Dec 2012 05:02:21 GMT7d465b84-1117-4b9e-9f7d-eb2211ce16fa
A very common request that my team and I receive at BizStream revolves around adding on a new chunk of functionality to a web site. This request can come in the form of social media integration or a customer feedback form, but 9 times out of 10 it has to do with adding e-commerce functionality to an existing site. This type of work is very common for sites that have been around for awhile or previously acted as just a brochure type site.

These sites commonly already had product pages defined, but were only intended to serve out information about each product or service a company offers. As a web site grows, the logical next steps are to add the infamous “Buy Now” button, configure e-commerce store settings, hook up a payment gateway, and start collecting more revenue (hopefully).

The above steps are all easy to do if the site is built with content management system like Kentico, but what if the site has 100, 500, or even 1,000 products that already exist? I sure would not want to create those SKUs by hand. This scenario is a perfect time to use some automation to solve the problem. Below is an example code snippet that used the Kentico CMS API to accomplish this task.

Kentico EMS provides a great way to create marketing campaigns that allow website owners and authors to measure the effectiveness of their different marketing activities. I really feel that it is a great tool to use. So in doing my part in the blog take over, I created a post about how to use the Kentico EMS API to create on-line maketing campaigns automatically and on a scheduled base.

]]>Fri, 16 Nov 2012 08:30:18 GMT245ffabd-59da-4e02-9d1c-f91b98df5b03Sun, 11 Nov 2012 00:19:12 GMTe0d1c70e-ccc7-45ea-b0b9-5a7706dd0ebbSun, 21 Oct 2012 20:05:47 GMT2b7d5131-f3d1-48c3-8911-f8ea7929f4e9Content Staging is a really great feature of Kentico CMS. We use it all the time at BizStream. The major benefit that we get by using this feature is that it saves a ton of time when it comes to deploying content and object changes from our development servers to our client's production servers. However, earlier this week I ran into a slight issue with Content Staging. The dreaded synchronization failed error happened when I went to sync a new file in the Media Library.]]>Thu, 06 Sep 2012 22:40:17 GMT327454c7-59d2-41c0-b543-86c70fc387f5 a ticket to Kentico Connection 2012. So let's get right down to business. Drum roll please....

ProBrandono was selected at random from the 10 different entries that the contest received.]]>Fri, 31 Aug 2012 15:41:07 GMT8c36441f-2c13-4867-9492-cb2a318412fb
Yep, its that time if year again, the best, most informative Kentico CMS conference is back. If you read this blog than you probably already know that. On September 17th and 18th Kentico Developers, Partners, Employees and Customers will be meeting up in Denver, CO for the 2012 version of Kentico Connection.

This year I am thrilled to be speaking at the conference. I will be giving a session on integrating Kentico CMS with just about anything you can imagine. I may even show you how you can customize Kentico CMS to wash your car. Full abstract is below.

]]>Thu, 23 Aug 2012 22:49:57 GMT8b14d4ce-5300-439d-8580-67280b5a3426
Yep, you read it right. I am officially opening a new contest. I am giving away a FREE ticket to the upcoming Kentico Connections 2012 conference in Denver, CO on September 17th and 18th, 2012.

Kentico Connections is Kentico Software’s annual user conference. This year the conference will commemorate the launch of Kentico CMS 7.0, give insight into where the product is going, and give attendees direct access to the people who built Kentico CMS.

To find out how to win continue reading after the jump.

]]>Sat, 04 Aug 2012 16:06:27 GMTeffdd256-522c-4d85-8bf5-952cc8a57068part 1 of this mini blog post series we setup a Twitter App that we will connect Kentico CMS to automatically publish content to. In part 2 of the series we walked through doing the same thing but with Facebook. Now as we wrap things up, this post will complete the series by getting down to heart of the new Auto Publishing feature of Kentico CMS 7. So if you have not read the previous two posts in the series please do so now, and then come back for the finale.]]>Sat, 14 Jul 2012 23:13:27 GMT0f612df5-ba24-4d00-bf54-06267ac05cddpart 1 of this mini blog post series we setup a Twitter App that eventually we will connect Kentico CMS to automatically publish content to. This post will continue the series by showing you how to create the last piece of setup that we need, the Facebook App and the Facebook Page. So if you have not read the introduction post please do so now, and then come right back.]]>Sat, 14 Jul 2012 23:12:52 GMTcc8c3969-3f64-4a32-aacd-927dfa63df97new features of Kentico CMS 7. Up next on my list is the new Auto Publishing feature. This feature adds even more social media integration between Kentico CMS and Twitter / Facebook. The icing on the cake is that Auto Publishing comes right out of the box, no custom code is needed. Today I am not only going to review how to use the new Auto Publishing feature of Kentico, but also show you how to add it to any custom document type that you might have.]]>Sat, 14 Jul 2012 23:11:52 GMTcabbe5fe-f1dd-4c48-917d-f0714ec3fba7Martin’s Hejtmanek’s post about the full set of changes and updates, I was inspired to blog about a few of the new features and changes that excited me. Don’t forget to check out my last post about the release of Kentico CMS 7.0 RC if you have not done so already.]]>Fri, 06 Jul 2012 23:16:31 GMTdcaa755b-3cee-4763-8455-d327549dbef7Kentico CMS 7 Release Candidate (RC) was made available to the general public. Again there are a large new set of new features and improvements that come with this newest version. I recommend reading the official Kentico CMS 7 RC blog post, and then diving into the release notes.

I have downloaded the RC, and got it running. It looks very polished at first glance. The first thing that looks very nice is the new e-commerce starter site. This is an option you can now choose right away during the installation process.
]]>Fri, 29 Jun 2012 23:38:22 GMT06e80684-8ac9-49d8-a44b-cc51d6ef1319official Kentico Roadmap. As soon as I get my hands on the beta, my plan is to start reviewing the new features just like I did for the 6.0 release. Then when 7.0 officially comes out I hope to have my full review ready to go.]]>Fri, 01 Jun 2012 01:25:33 GMTf97022ce-1142-4263-9947-eee1d81d73f4
Tonight I was lucky enough to have a few hours of free time between work and family activities.So I decided to take some of the next generation of developer tools from Microsoft for a spin. I downloaded and installed the newest Microsoft SQL Server 2012 release and the Visual Studio 11 Beta release. Once I got past those installers, I fired up the Kentico Installation Manager and installed a fresh Kentico CMS 6.0 instance.

I’m happy to report that everything works flawlessly. The default Kentico CMS solution was effortlessly upgraded to a Visual Studio 11 compatible solution. The web project itself compiled and built just fine. Running the project via the built in web server, as well as, IIS Express worked without a hiccup.

]]>Tue, 03 Apr 2012 02:37:23 GMT9c54282f-69aa-4158-a32b-b4e8241a8db1Mon, 26 Mar 2012 01:43:00 GMT74412ad7-9e3b-4ca9-893a-a6bccf804b54Mon, 26 Mar 2012 01:41:00 GMT424c5bf3-8010-4a56-abc2-6c736a7daad8BizStream we have done our fair share of upgrades from Kentico CMS 4.x, 5.x, or 5.5 R2 to Kentico CMS 6.0. Along the way we have run into more than a few issues, but overall the process is usually quite smooth. Today I had an interesting problem though. When a newly upgraded site loaded up in the CMSDesk, the main content area was just a blank looking box. It appeared to be in some sort of disabled state. This was something that I had not seen before. Especially since the site was not using workflow nor the versioning system.
]]>Wed, 14 Mar 2012 02:03:37 GMT68e81e27-6ad5-4487-81a8-ad457c4d0138
It was long overdue, but I finally was able to finish migrating my blog from BlogEngine.Net to Kentico CMS. And as you can tell, not only did I migrate it, Adam Reece was kind enough to do a complete redesign. So thanks a lot Adam!

I actually enjoyed using BlogEngine.Net quite a bit because of it’s slick widget / plug-in capabilities. However, those capabilities can’t compare to the out of the box functionality of Kentico CMS. Plus the previous version of my blog had a theme that really limited what I could do with content. It was tough to fit good screen shots and code samples in the main content area. So it was time to move.

]]>Sat, 04 Feb 2012 15:07:20 GMTd6f54c77-6d4d-41bf-b179-bb1500c4795eThom Robbins, Chief Evangelist from Kentico CMS, and I sat down and had a private conversation. It was then that he first informed me that Kentico would like to make me a Kentico CMSMost Valuable Professional. After getting over my initial shock, I felt honored about being the recipient of this award.]]>Mon, 16 Jan 2012 17:24:00 GMT09a5d9f0-00e8-4c0b-bb03-cda54e3c7320
In this blog post series:

Top 5 New Features for Internet Marketers in Kentico CMS 6 (this post)

Today we have made it to the last post of the series and will cover what’s new for Internet Marketers. I must admit I am a little behind in finishing this series off, I thought it would be done sooner, but enough with the excuses lets get on with it.

]]>Sat, 31 Dec 2011 18:54:00 GMT9552f8c3-f8b5-430b-ba48-1548252a5923
Lately at BizStream we have been doing more and more upgrades of Kentico CMS 5.5 R2 to Kentico CMS 6.0. During the latest upgrade project we came across a very curious error while using the Kentico CMS Installation Manager.
]]>Sat, 03 Dec 2011 19:42:00 GMT7d17f718-1ef4-4b99-b2a6-ea347bfe8753BizStream and NVINT. It featured four presentations explaining what exactly cloud computing is and how the cloud can benefit organizations large and small alike.

Patrick Foley from Microsoft kicked off the morning with a discussion of where the whole cloud computing concept originated from and how Microsoft is positioning it’s public cloud and private cloud offerings. Patrick did a great job of explaining the various cloud models, IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS.

]]>Fri, 11 Nov 2011 03:29:00 GMT3ad4af6c-6c54-4652-8e5c-0b8d67394ed1Cloud Power GR. The event is hosted by BizStream and NVINT, providers of cloud hosted applications and cloud hosting services. The goal is to explain cloud computing in a way everyone from the seasoned IT Director to the typical business person can understand.]]>Mon, 24 Oct 2011 00:46:00 GMTc0ca50f5-0676-417d-88c2-302cfe42d83fThis past week, I was lucky enough to be able to attend the 2nd annual Kentico Connection conference in Denver, Colorado. The conference served as a stage for Kentico to release the newest version of it’s software, as well as, provide a place for the members of the Kentico community to meet up and discuss all things CMS. Kentico bills it as the the place where developers, marketers and business connect.

I have only been to a few other conferences of this type, but this one easily rises to the top of my list. Every aspect of the conference was excellent.

]]>Mon, 03 Oct 2011 01:46:00 GMT235272cb-848a-4b07-8c74-3d2a2b88bb56
This post continues my series on the new features of Kentico CMS 6.0. Today I am targeting website administrators and Kentico site administrators as one audience. Mostly though it’s the group of people in the trenches, or in our case network closets, normally tasked with installing the occasional SSL certificate or making sure the servers aren’t on fire.

The release of Kentico CMS 6.0 brings some much needed love to this area of installing, maintaining, and monitoring an instance or multiple instances of the Kentico product. Let’s dive in.

]]>Tue, 20 Sep 2011 12:15:00 GMT8a31a4fd-f9b2-4c5b-bdb6-b8385e0f65a5
In my last two posts I talked about what should make Developers and Designers happy. With this post I will shift my focus to the actual end users of the product, or what we like to lovingly refer to in the industry as the Content Editors.

In my opinion, it is neck and neck between Developers and Content Editors for when it comes to who will receive the most benefits from the 6.0 update. So lets get right to it.

]]>Wed, 31 Aug 2011 03:32:00 GMT3e3ea33b-99ca-418b-b042-a945caa097c6
This is the second post in a series about the newest release of Kentico CMS. If you have not done so, please be sure to start out with reading the introduction to the Top 5 New Features for Developers in Kentico CMS 6.0. Then jump right back here.
]]>Mon, 29 Aug 2011 02:43:00 GMT1b305f22-21ff-4ef7-a1e6-f7f0de9298e3
The release of Kentico CMS 6.0 can be summed up in one word. Huge. I counted over 100 new features or improvements listed on the official Kentico CMS 6.0 New Features document that Martin Hejtmanek (CTO of Kentico) released last week. In fact the document weighs in at 114 pages. I recommend downloading it and reading through it all to get a full grasp on the 6.0 release.

In an effort to summarize and quickly communicate the most beneficial additions, I have started this blog post as the first in a series. The goal of this series will be to break out the best new features by the intended audience.

]]>Mon, 29 Aug 2011 01:12:00 GMT0637c274-ef21-43b5-a6ff-0715c4c0e87e
Right now Kentico CMS partners can login to the Partner Portal and download the beta version of Kentico CMS 6.0. The beta of 6.0 is intented for testing only.

]]>Sat, 20 Aug 2011 01:51:00 GMT143aa6af-c00a-4533-8520-fa7f26a92b79
This weekend I finally had time to sit down and focus on taking the Kentico developer certification test. And after 42 minutes of test taking, I passed! Obtaining the Kentico cert was on my list of things to do since back in 2010 when it first came out, but we have been so busy at BizStream that I haven’t had a really good time to do it.
]]>Mon, 08 Aug 2011 13:01:00 GMT7f6a47da-1d5b-49e7-9856-329ec1be042a
This post is intended to introduce my latest web part that I have created for Kentico CMS. This new web part wraps up all the logic you need to add a Google +1 button to your Kentico CMS pages or page templates.
]]>Fri, 08 Jul 2011 12:59:00 GMT900d088f-1d2b-466d-bfcc-70026e1be134Sun, 03 Apr 2011 23:46:00 GMT8011f676-73a4-4eef-959f-eded14a28383
Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 is hot off the presses and it includes a great new feature, IIS Express. IIS Express is a step up from the old Cassini web server that had previously been included with Visual Studio since the 2005 edition. You can read more about IIS Express at Scott Guthrie’s blog.

To switch your Kentico project to use this new feature, you just need to go to the Visual Studio top menu after your solution is loaded, and click Website –> Use IIS Express.

From there you can debug the solution as normal. If you need any help with setting up a Kentico project for debugging check out my post about it. The project should start compiling normally and your default browser should pop up pointed your localhost. This request should now be served up through IIS Express and you should see the IIS Express logo appear in your system tray.

Sure enough that all worked for me, and after the default project loaded I was presented with a nice new shiny………error message.

Hmm that seemed odd to me. But as it turns out there is an HttpModule in the system.web node that IIS Express doesn’t like.

]]>Mon, 21 Mar 2011 12:04:00 GMT3fbdd496-19e9-4859-bac6-f4868a6ea3b4Sun, 27 Feb 2011 14:31:00 GMTd1d33059-63a1-483b-90bf-b676135344bd
To date, the most visited post on my blog has been “7 Things You Might Want to Check After Launching a New Kentico CMS Website”. Based on that post’s success I have decided to create this follow up post. Below are 5 more items to add to your launch checklist.
]]>Thu, 16 Dec 2010 02:57:00 GMT8a382748-159f-4a3c-95db-907e35d6b6c5
The ASP.NET and C# based ScrewTurn wiki is one of the baddest wiki’s on the block. It is sleek and powerful at what it does, and oh did I mention that it is completely open source and free ? Do I have your attention yet ?
]]>Mon, 22 Nov 2010 20:36:00 GMTda7bd409-b92a-4173-aa93-b2fc1d3481d0
Over 150 sites were submitted to the Kentico “Site of the Year 2010” contest. Those submissions were divided up into 10 categories based on which industry that each website was based in, as well as a few special categories like largest integration website and best overall website design.

One of the sites that made it to the final round of voting is www.MaryFreeBed.com. The Mary Free Bed website falls in the Healthcare category. It just so happens that it is a website that BizStream developed from the ground up, and one that we are very proud to be a part of. We worked with a great set of people to make this website and I commend everyone who was part of the team.

We are so proud that we really want to get the word out. We want to get as many people as possible to vote for the site so that it can win the contest. Browse on over to the Site of the year 2010 contest on Kentico’s site and vote for the www.MaryFreeBed.com website in the Healthcare category right now! I promise it will only take you about 3 minutes of your time and it will help us out.

At the very least, you will also be able to see some great examples of websites built with Kentico CMS that are powerful, easy to use, and look great.

]]>Sat, 06 Nov 2010 01:52:00 GMTa91e8724-0cd2-4dc8-a302-f81f4bf7c1c5Fri, 08 Oct 2010 02:49:00 GMTeb02d84e-421e-4b13-9165-caf4cf4e811cOver the last few days I have read about a security flaw that many sites and blogs are reporting, that Scott Guthrie originally posted. In fact I am quite surprised that it has gotten so much attention, usually these things go a bit un noticed.

That attention prompted me to check out the default Kentico installation and see what the settings are in the web.config file, to see if the default installation was at risk.

Sure enough the default installation looks like this (ASP.NET 4)

]]>Sun, 19 Sep 2010 14:41:00 GMTd623156a-0aa3-4858-8e1d-c6bfefdc977e
Today I'm writing a small quick tip type of post that allows you to customize the Smart search wep parts inside of Kentico CMS in a way that I think helps the usability of searching Kentico based web sites.

Kentico's Smart search web parts easily create functionality that allow you to have a very powerful search engine right at your own disposal. The built-in functionality indexes your site's content and displays search results that are ranked based on relevancy. Trust me, it's much more than just a SQL WHERE clause. I'm not trying to cover the entire spectrum of search inside a Kentico site so if you are not used to using the Smart search check out the Smart Search documentation on Kentico's Devnet.

]]>Thu, 02 Sep 2010 00:32:00 GMTf19f45d4-0f77-409e-8afd-399199092d98Wed, 18 Aug 2010 04:43:00 GMT5e1ecdd4-f830-481e-8c82-268113772369Mon, 02 Aug 2010 22:15:00 GMTc3b9f62d-ede6-4426-8d1b-4b7c1af1b4d8
I’m a huge fan of using a wiki to help organize our business and it’s various functions, such as creating software. In fact I usually end of recommending the use of a wiki to almost all my clients who do not already have one.

If you are not familiar with what a wiki is, let me give a simple definition right here:

A wiki can be defined as a web page or web site that allows a community of users to add, edit, and maintain content that usually surrounds a given topic or topics.

It’s a simple concept really, a web page that holds content, that’s almost no different than any web page out there. But the real difference between any old web page and a wiki is that anyone can edit a wiki right on the fly, while a web page is normally maintained by one person. In fact the more users that a wiki has adding and editing content, the more relevant and informational that wiki will become.

Pretty much the question boiled down to, why after submitting the Google site map URL to Google’s Webmaster tools, was the specified website’s pages not showing up in the resulting index or when viewed at the sites ~/CMSPages/GoogleSiteMap.aspx page.

Since the question came in from a friend, I decided to dig deeper and lend a hand. As soon as I logged into the site’s CMSDesk I quickly noticed what was up. Most of the content pages were using Custom Document Types. I was actually impressed to see this because it is sort of an advanced feature to use inside Kentico and normally an under utilized feature as well.

The output of the GoogleSiteMap.aspx page looked something like this, only the normal Menu Items from the CMS Tree:

In my last post I described what it takes to use the URL Rewriting and Document Aliasing capabilities of Kentico. I also promised a twist to those who made it through the entire blog post, and here it is. So without further ado, I now present my solution for creating a Custom Document Alias in Kentico that is QueryString aware.

Let’s get started. Now that you understand more about URL Rewriting say you had a URL like this:

]]>Tue, 06 Jul 2010 02:51:00 GMT69957ac1-64e9-400b-bb9a-a24b3973d8f6Kentico CMS is extremely powerful when it comes to controlling the URL of a website. Right out of the box, you get the power of aliasing whatever URL you want to whatever document or resource you have in the content tree.

Heck since Kentico 4.x you can even mask/change the extension or just get rid of it all together, to get more control of your site’s URLs.

I can’t stress enough how beneficial this feature is when it comes to creating SEO friendly links, maintaining out of date website paths/structure, or just making it easier on your visitors to reach the pages that they need to get to.

Let’s get started with an example. For instance let’s say your website had a products section that sold different types of potato chips. My favorite potato chips are Baked Lays. So we will go with that for the example.

Way back when developers didn’t do much to make the URL SEO or user friendly, you would have a typical URL like these:

http://mcbeev.com/products/chips.aspx?name=Baked Lays

Google and other search engines see this only as one URL, …/chips.aspx, which doesn’t do us very good.

Now let’s say you had this same website in Kentico. It might look something like this: